The aim of this study was to characterize the antibody response induced by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines in a cohort of healthcare workers. A total of 2247 serum samples were analyzed using the Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S-test (Roche Diagnostics International Ltd., Rotkreuz, Switzerland). Sex, age, body mass index (BMI), arterial hypertension, smoking and time between infection and/or vaccination and serology were considered the confounding factors. Regarding the medians, subjects previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 who preserved their response to the nucleocapsid (N) protein showed higher humoral immunogenicity (BNT162b2: 6456.0 U/mL median; mRNA-1273: 2505.0 U/mL) compared with non-infected (BNT162b2: 867.0 U/mL; mRNA-1273: 2300.5 U/mL) and infected subjects with a lost response to N protein (BNT162b2: 2992.0 U/mL). After controlling for the confounders, a higher response was still observed for mRNA-1273 compared with BNT162b2 in uninfected individuals (FC = 2.35, p < 0.0001) but not in previously infected subjects (1.11 FC, p = 0.1862). The lowest levels of antibodies were detected in previously infected non-vaccinated individuals (39.4 U/mL). Clinical variables previously linked to poor prognoses regarding SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as age, BMI and arterial hypertension, were positively associated with increasing levels of anti-S protein antibody exclusively in infected subjects. The mRNA-1273 vaccine generated a higher antibody response to the S protein than BNT162b2 in non-infected subjects only.
Keywords: BNT162b2; SARS-CoV-2; antibodies; mRNA-1273; vaccine.